Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

exceptional very good good average poor

All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

News

Kocchar heads for Brum

Chef-entrepreneur Atul Kocchar will open his first UK restaurant under the Not Real Indian (NRI) brand in Birmingham this September, serving cuisine developed by Indian cooks living abroad.

Born in India and trained with the Oberoi group, Kocchar made him name at Tamarind in London and in 2003 opened his Mayfair flagship Benares. He launched NRI in Mumbai last year, and in January opened his first restaurant dedicated to traditional British cuisine – albeit with the occasional spicy twist – Hawkyns, in Amersham.

The new 180-seat venture in Birmingham’s Mailbox development will serve such dishes as Sri Lankan curry, Malaysian-Indian curried noodles, and British-Indian spiced fish and chips.

Kocchar’s foodie empire now stretches from London to Mumbai via Spain, Dubai and P&O cruise ships. There are some indications that quality has suffered as a result, with ratings for Benares plummeting in the latest Harden’s Survey although fans still laud the “subtle, gorgeous flavours” of Kocchar’s cuisine.